Transitions

Discipleship Training School 2012 Graduates!

Well, 2012 is winding down. There are just a few more weeks left in this year…it’s hard to believe. Last night, the DTS wrapped up with a view words shared by previous students and some testimonies from several of this year’s students. Hearing their words is very encouraging…they were challenged to grow, and they found out more about God and themselves. It’s always bittersweet saying good-bye to friends that we have come to know and love over the past five months. That’s something that I don’t think I will ever get used to…the constant transition of people in and out of our lives. But the positive side is that we get to meet so many great people along their journey. Congratulations to the 2012 DTS students! I’m excited to see where […]

Sad…

It’s quiet in my house this morning…too quiet. No dog barking, no dog collar jingling….just quiet. Yesterday we said good-bye to our yellow lab, Buddy. He was such a good dog, and he made the “big move” from the U.S. to El Salvador with us. He’s been a part of our family since the very beginning, and I met Buddy when Jon and I first started dating. The whole family is grieving the loss of our “Buddy.” If you are an animal lover than you know how heart-wrenching it is to lose a pet. I will be forever grateful to Buddy for looking out for our family, and for making the transition to El Salvador a smooth one for our children. It feels like a chapter in my life has […]

And They’re Off!

I haven’t been blogging too much lately, because I’ve been busy getting the kids ready to go back to school. Getting ready for school in El Salvador means buying and labelling tons of school supplies and covering every notebook in colored paper, and then plastic. I’m not sure what parents in the U.S. have to do to get their kids ready for Elementary School but I don’t think it involves yards and yards of sticky saran wrap like it does around here. The textbooks also get covered in plastic (see pictures below) and it takes forever to get all of their school stuff ready for the first day! But somehow I managed to get it all together, and this morning the kids were off to their first day of school! Both kids are […]

Small Successes

In El Salvador, many times we count the small successes as big ones. This weekend we are rejoicing in one such success. Three years ago, we were fundraising and in the process of transitioning out of our home in Pittsburgh. Our main goal for moving to El Salvador was to enter into the lives of the people of El Salvador, particularly the fatherless. We had a dream of seeing the fatherless connected with their true Father, and to see them begin a life-long journey of coming to know Him. Beyond that, we also came with the hope of bringing physical and emotional healing and seeing people’s lives change holisticly. The thing we have learned is that small successes come by small steps. Day by day, moment by moment walking through […]

Third Culture Kids

“Is it hard to live in a foreign country?” This was the last question that my kids were answering as they responded to a letter from a Sunday School class in Maryland last week. The letter asked some questions about life as a missionary.  Tori and Ian discussed them, and Tori wrote down the answers. But this one had them stumped. They weren’t even sure which “foreign” country the letter was referring to. I explained it to them and after a lot of thinking and a little confusion, they finally settled on answering that they missed their friends and family in the U.S. This conversation made me realize that my kids have made a transition into becoming full-fledged Third Culture Kids. TCKs.  They were born in the U.S.A., but they are […]

In Search of My Inner Latina

Those of you know me are probably laughing right now as you read this title. I’m about as gringa as they come and no matter how long I search, I’m not going to find my “inner Latina.” But yet, my dance instructor tells me to keep on searching. That’s right, folks, I said dance instructor. Jon and I are currently enrolled in Latin dance classes. Now, we became painfully aware at a recent wedding that we are seriously lacking in Latin dance vibes. We have a friend who’s in town for a few months, she wanted to take a few dance classes, one thing led to another…and now we’re spending two hours a week doing the salsa, merengue, and another dance that I can’t remember. Let’s just say that it’s not […]

We’re Back!

We didn’t fall of the face of the earth…we were just visiting a different part of it, and now we’re back! We had a great trip to the U.S.A. to visit our families in Maryland and in Pennsylvania. The kids had a blast, and it was a much needed break from our life in El Salvador.  It was so nice to catch up with friends and family, and we met with a few of our sponsoring churches. It was so encouraging to hear the excitement of those who support our work! It was difficult to say good-bye, and that won’t change no matter how many times we do it. The time with friends and family was exactly what we needed, and especially what I needed personally. The kids loved getting […]

Courage

Serving God and serving others in a foreign land has gotten a lot easier than it used to be. Hundreds of years ago, missionaries would leave their homeland and travel to places unseen to spend the rest of their life. They would pack all of their belongings in a coffin in case they died on the mission field…then their body could be shipped back home in case things didn’t go as planned. Now that’s an encouraging thought! Jon and I had the luxury of visiting our country of service several times before we committed to live here. We had access to all kinds of sociological and cultural studies on the history and the problems facing El Salvador. Don’t get me wrong, we have faced many unexpected bumps in the road but […]

Traditions

Traditions are the things that bring families together, that give them a common identity, and that give them a reference point for “the ways things always are.” We get traditions from our culture, our families, and our friends. They make us who we are, and they give us a place to touch base year after year. One of the strange things about living outside of the U.S. is that our children have a hard time “touching base” with the traditions that were part of our lives growing up. Everything is just different from what we knew as children. We can’t pass down certain things, because they just don’t fit in El Salvador. Instead, we find ourselves making new traditions, unique traditions. This Christmas we had a lot of fun celebrating Christmas in […]

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